WikiLeaks weathers DDoS assault

Continues to spaff secret diplo cables, beg for Bitcoin

WikiLeaks' website slowed to a crawl on Tuesday night following an apparent denial of service attack.

The assault follows days after the accelerated publication of thousands of the remaining US diplomatic cables which the whistleblowing website first began publishing last autumn.

The initial publication of the controversial cables was also accompanied by a DDoS attack. Patriot hacker Jester claimed credit for running the November assault, but no one has come forward to 'fess up to the latest assault.

In the latest of a series of updates to its Twitter account, WikiLeaks said: "WikiLeaks.org still down for some. You will need to wait 10 minutes or so until DNS cache timeout. Until then, http://wikileaks.lu/ etc". The whistleblowing site also repeated earlier calls for individuals to donate to its cause, via bank transfer or Bitcoin payment.

At the time of writing on Wednesday afternoon, the site appears to be operating normally.

WikiLeaks directed interested parties to mirror sites during the assault, so its effects were symbolic rather than amounting to a genuine blockade against those interested in hunting down the latest cache of leaked cables.

Unlike the earlier releases, which were vetted by mainstream media organisations and only released gradually, the latest batch of cables have been released in a firehose-style torrent, sparking fears that the names of US agents and informants might be inadvertently identified. The whistleblowing site itself says such concerns are baseless. ®